


Less than 6 degrees

by Higgystar



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 02:12:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1840534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgystar/pseuds/Higgystar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from the kink meme: Daryl looks familiar to Ford, but it takes him a while to realise it's because he knew Merle when Merle was in the army.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Less than 6 degrees

Abraham has met a lot of people throughout his life. Being in military meant that a lot of faces came and went, some stayed and became brothers in arms, others left whether through lack of guts or from a bullet and a wound, but he liked to think he remembered most of them. Being in the army was being part of a family and though members would come and go, they still remained a part of it all. So before everything had gone to shit he’d had pictures, an old torn up book with pictures of every single unit he’d been a part of, of every member of every camp and every squad he’d fought and trained with. Some of the faces got mixed up but that’s why he’d had the pictures, to remind himself of who they were and what they had been to him at one point.

Now here he was in a dark train car and trying to figure out exactly how in the heck he remembered this face that had walked into his life.

The train car is dimly lit at the best of times, full of people that had someone brought the three of them into their little family and in the space of a few hours had earned his trust. Glenn he knows is a man of his word, a determined little shit who was tougher than he looked, and his wife was the same. A hard girl who fought for what she wanted and what she needed without backing down. They may not have known each other long, but he liked them and their attitude; the world was desperate for people who wouldn’t give up.

The Tara girl is a strange one, she’s not quite as at ease as the others and from their brief introductions he’d found out she had a lot of fear in her. But the thing is when people stopped being afraid of dying, they got more dangerous and besides she’d volunteered to help in his mission so he could get used to her. Plus Rosita seemed to enjoy her company.

Bob and Sasha are not quite so sharp, there’s an emptiness inside of them that he can see just starting to get filled up. It’s a small glimmer of a thing but if they hang on long enough it might just bloom into something stronger, something worth fighting tooth and nail for. They’re polite, eager followers with enough knowledge to be helpful and quick minds that can find flaws in any of their plans, sometimes you needed people to tell you what was wrong and stop you from getting ahead of yourself.

Then there were the newcomers. Those that were family and had welcomed them all with open arms and a determination to escape. He’d liked that right away, there was no panic, just sheer bloody will to get out and teach these bastards a lesson. The ringleader, Rick, he was tough, a man of brute force and enough love to keep himself strong. There’s a tension between him and his boy but Abraham can see the way he looks at the kid, the way he can see how Rick would do anything to keep him safe.

The woman is the same. Michonne is quieter, built for danger and twice as brutal when she needs to be. He watches her care for the kid with gentle fingers and whispered words, promises of safety but not of some perfect far away land. She’s a realist but one who knew how to use her words to great affect and it seems they all knew lies only hurt more in this harsh world.

All of them he can understand well enough. They are people that have fought hard to win their own wars and here they stood with him at the end of it all, but Daryl, he’s a tough one if only because he swears he’s seen that face before.

He tries to guesstimate Daryl’s age to help work it out but he can’t seem to get a clear answer from him and really the guy is younger than him but he can’t tell by how much. It must be a substantial number of years though. He’s tough, an archer by the sounds of it and through conversation and memories shared in the dark he knows he is a quick hand with a crossbow. Glenn mentions Daryl being a hunter, and from Daryl’s accent he can tell that he’s a backwoods sort of boy, the kind that was more at home in the woods than the city.

Racking through his memories he tries to find his face, a younger version, or something to find where Daryl Dixon’s face has a place in his mind. It feels hopeless and he hates not being able to find what he wants, so he goes back to questioning. Daryl isn’t very open about much of anything and he denies being in anything to do with the military and seems far more focussed on the other members of their rushed together family than him. Which he can understand.

Thing is he knows he has seen that face before. Somewhere in the dimmest corner of his foggy mind he can remember bright blues eyes, a crooked smile and a dirt smeared face. There’s no voice to put with it though and the image is static, there’s no event joined to it and he cannot for the life of him every recall having been in a unit with the bright young face he remembers. It’s strange to know there’s a link there somewhere and not able to access it, but he knows he’s right and he knows he knows that face.

It’s not until Glenn makes an offhand comment, just something in passing where he uses Daryl’s full name that it all clicks into place.

In an instant he recalls why the image of a young Daryl was static, because he had never met him at all. The image of a bright young face smiling was paired without another one, one grinning with eyes squinted in the sunlight, Daryl’s arms wrapped about the shoulders of another man in the wrinkled photograph and he remembers why he knows that face so well.

In the army you had a family, but your own family, the blood and love you left back home wasn’t there, meaning photos were all they ever had. He’d seen so many images over the years, photos of loved ones pinned to bunks, slipped into pockets, on the dashboard of vehicles, tucked into the inside of helmets to be close and he knows where he knows that he knows the younger Dixon because of the elder.

The kid had been young, cocky, one of those assholes who had taken time in training to get out of prison. Merle. He remembers the son of a bitch had yelled back, tried to become top dog and though he was a natural with a weapon he was also the biggest shit he’d ever met. Merle had gone through plenty of punishments until he’d learnt his place, earned plenty of bruises and been in enough fights to learn what he needed and then he was gone with a dishonourable discharge.

He hadn’t know Merle for long, barely more than a few months until he’d moved on and up the ladder, but he remembers thinking the man had no heart. Merle trained for war like he was made for it and sometimes Abraham had wanted to ask what he was fighting for exactly. Because everyone had their reasons; duty, honour, family, love, hate and various others. Merle just shrugged and said it was better than prison.

They’d lived together, been on drills and gone through training together and he’d never seen Merle give more emotion than anger and joy at getting into another fight. The man was violent and unpredictable, the kind of person Abraham did not want in his unit, there was no controlling and loose cannon like Merle Dixon. Maybe they hadn’t been friends but he remembers the whole of them talking one night in the bunkhouse, sharing stories of back home and showing pictures of family members.

Someone had made a joke, he remembers someone stating that Merle was too much of a heartless bastard to have a family and that he must have sprung up out of nowhere like a weed instead. He remembers standing up and shoving Merle back down, stopping the fight before it happened and easing it all by asking Merle about his family. They all had personal affects, some of them were kept secret, some were on proud display for everyone to see but until that moment it seemed that Merle had none at all.

Abraham can remember being handed the picture. Merle had yanked it out of his pocket, the thing was torn around the edges, wrinkled all over with scratches and tears through it. The image on it must have been dear to him and he remembers holding it carefully, not wanting to break something so precious even more than it already was. Black and white the image is a little grainy, probably from a cheap camera picked up at a dime store, the kind with no flash and a wind on film that never seemed to get full use.

Merle was younger in the picture, only by a couple of years from how he remembers him, but there’s less lines in his face and he doesn’t look like such an angry ass. He’d even say Merle looked happy in the image. Hanging on his shoulders was a younger kid, grinning with ruffled hair and slightly blurred from the action of moving whilst the image was taken. “Son?” He remembers asking, because usually if there was a picture this secret and worn it was because it was someone’s kid.

“’s Daryl, my baby brother.” Merle had snorted, snatching back the photo and shoving it in his pocket, not even looking at the image. Abraham remembers thinking he must know it off by heart anyway. “Kid’s the only real family I got; only family I need anyway.”

There had been no more questions, or if they’d been asked they certainly hadn’t been answered. Merle was a secretive bastard and he’d never found out any more than that, even if he’d wanted to know where the kid was whilst he was here and not at home. Things had moved on and he’d filed the memory away at the back of his mind, never to be disturbed until now, in a dimly lit train car with these new people.

Looking over Daryl now he can see it. The way he moves and acts like Merle, but a quieter version of him, a version that people could deal with. One who had loyalty and a new family that had grown around him into something strong in this harsh world. He never even knew the kid before and he barely even remembered Merle Dixon let alone knew him, but he likes to think that Merle would probably be proud of that kid brother he’d talked about all those years ago.

A part of him wants to ask. But he knows what the answer would be. If a family member wasn’t around it meant either two things; dead or unknown and neither were good things to think about. Then another part of him wants to tell Daryl what he knows, what he remembers from the foggy corners of his mind and he wonders if it would be a reassurance to know. But would it help? To know that he remembered his brother? What good would it do to speak of him?

So Abraham keeps his memories to himself and sits back against the wall, watching as the others all slept and Merle Dixon’s kid brother curled closer to his new family. Maybe one day he’d say something and let Daryl know that he knew his brother, he wouldn’t lie and say Merle Dixon was a good man, but he could say that he was at least a loyal man. He wonders if Daryl knew about the picture, if he knew anything about how he was the only family Merle Dixon cared about having all those years ago.

It’s all a jumble of dusty memories and possible conversations that he files away for the future. Maybe. If Daryl ever asked.


End file.
